


Rust and Stardust

by orphan_account



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Lolita, Childhood Sexual Abuse, Dark Steve Rogers, Evil Steve Rogers, Howard Stark Is a Good Dad, Howard Stark's Good Parenting, Hurt Tony Stark, Kid Tony Stark, Kidnapping, Lolita, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, POV Steve Rogers, Pervy Steve Rogers, Possessive Behavior, Possessive Steve Rogers, Pre-Canon, Rape, Sad, Statutory Rape, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Underage Sex, mostly - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-13
Updated: 2018-10-13
Packaged: 2019-08-01 09:08:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16281725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: “I loved you. I was a pentapod monster, but I loved you. I was despicable and brutal, and turpid, and everything, mais je t’aimais, je t’aimais! And there were times when I knew how you felt, and it was hell to know it, my little one. Lolita girl, brave Dolly Schiller.”― Vladimir Nabokov, LolitaAKA the Lolita AU nobody asked for. AKA Steve never went in the ice.Title Credit: Lolita by Vladimir NabokovDisclaimer: I love Steve Rogers with my whole heart!! I just thought this would be fun to write please don't hate me





	Rust and Stardust

**Author's Note:**

> Quick Disclaimer: I took a few of the quotes in this directly from the book, so just be aware of that! The like 99.9% majority of this is mine, though.

It feels like a dream, that syrupy-sweet summer forever ago. The waves crash musically on the metropolitan beaches of Brooklyn, and the air feels smooth and lovely, even through the haze of industrial smoke. This is what the seraphs, the noble and just seraphs, envy, for they will always be bound by the austere law of heaven. The rebellion of two star-crossed boys in a hidden pocket of a beach made as much of broken glass as it is of sand is the stuff of medieval sonnets. This is the beginning of a tangle of thorns that will shape one young boy’s life until he’s a centenarian cheating death time and time again.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the sweet, secret mornings of one honeyed summer in 1933 are where it all began. There would be no Antonio if not for another enchanting young boy during the Depression.

He feels Bucky grab his hand tight, a sad smile on his face. At fifteen, he’s already begun a love affair with the world’s literature, but none of the books he’s read have spoken the volumes that Bucky’s smile does. That expression says,  _ This can never be anything more. I love you deeply, and I know that we are doomed. _ He returns the same tragic quirk of the lips and pulls his lover down onto the sand with him. They may be doomed, but he’ll take what he can get. When their lips meet, their love is frenzied and hopeful. This - he thinks - is something the Depression can never touch.  _ This is something that will always be ours. _

Their love is clumsy, messy, shameful,  _ agonizing.  _ They love in symphonies, they love alone on the beach in their socks and nothing more. Say all you want that Steve Rogers is a sick man, but he’s only ever been chasing after that arduous intimacy he felt in June of ‘33. He’s only ever wanted to possess someone as absolutely as he possessed that fifteen-year-old boy who died in July, 1933.

-

It has been said that life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one. Whoever said that didn’t know just how right they were, because they didn’t know Tony Stark. Tony’s whole life has been a wild, dizzying dance with death. Maybe someone more qualified would say that his many close encounters with the black goddess reflect a disregard for his own life. They would probably be right.

To list all of Tony’s near-death experiences would take far too long. There was that lab explosion the week he turned five, the trip to the hospital after he fell off the counter and cracked his skull while searching the cupboards for baking soda, the time he was working on a bot in the workshop and accidentally impaled himself on a sharpened two-by-four. His parents are sick and tired of taking their death-kissed son to the emergency room by the time he’s seven.

Even disregarding his apparent lack of self-preservation instincts, there’s no denying that Tony Stark is an exceptional child. He’s the prodigal son Howard always dreamed of, and Maria can’t help but be enamored by his selfless nature. He’s a boy with big plans and a big heart to back them up. More often than not, though, his big plans end in an ambulance ride.

Perhaps his most tragic flirtation with death begins the summer of 1985.

-

“Honey!” Maria shouts down the stairs. “Come upstairs!”

When she walks back to the parlor, Steve graciously accepts her offer to top off his glass of wine, though the super-soldier serum makes it useless. He smiles brightly at her as she settles back beside her husband on the couch, taking a short sip. He has to admit, he was intrigued when she mentioned that she and Howard have a fifteen-year-old son. He doesn’t know how he never knew before, but he hopes that it will provide some fun.

The truth is, most of the boys he meets don’t check all of his boxes - if any. He’s become exhausted by the tedious work of finding the passion that he so desperately craves. After sixty years of searching for someone that will fill the void in his soul, though, he still feels a spark in his chest at the prospect of meeting a teenage boy. Excitement blooms at the thought, moreover, of finding an opportunity to get what he wants.

There’s a loud  _ clang  _ from the workshop in the basement, and then clumsy footsteps ascend the stairs to the parlor. Steve feels the breath leave his lungs instantaneously as he lays his eyes upon the most beautiful boy he’s ever seen in seventy-five years on Earth. The boy has a mop of unruly black hair, sweat-slick olive skin, and wide Cognac eyes. He probably isn’t even aware of the motor oil smeared across his left cheek. Something deep and primal stirs in Steve when he locks eyes with the boy, and he scans Steve up and down before a devious grin sneaks its way onto his face.

“Are you finally pimping me out to pay my medical bills?” the boy asks, and his voice is so sweet. It’s just like that boy Steve loved so long ago. The pitch and cadence is music perfectly tuned to his ears. He feels something dangerous set ablaze behind his own blue eyes. “At least you have good taste.”   
  
Steve smirks at him furtively before looking away toward the floor. His game of cat and mouse is well-calculated, but it can’t happen here. Not yet. Not when he hasn’t gauged all of the variables yet. Maria has turned beet red by the time Steve looks back at her.

“Anthony, behave!” she scolds.  _ Anthony.  _ Steve turns the name over in his mind, and he decides that, yes, that’s perfect.  _ Anthony. Tony. Antonio. My Antonio. Maybe not mine yet, but soon.  _ His desire to possess another person has never been so feverish, so strong. “I’m so sorry.”   
  
Steve nods as though to excuse the behavior. His eyes are locked on his Antonio once again.

“This is Steve,” Howard says, and Steve nods appropriately in greeting. “He’s an old friend of mine - and your godfather. He’ll be staying with us for a few months.”

“Oh, joy,” Tony says, eyes staring right back into Steve’s own in challenge. He raises one eyebrow, and Steve coughs and looks away, nodding subtly for Tony to avert his eyes as well, lest it become too obvious. It’s almost too easy to make a boy, no matter how brilliant, believe that he’s an equal conspirator at equal risk in such a rotten affair as the one Steve has planned.

“He’ll be sleeping in your room, Anthony,” Maria clarifies, and Tony sighs dramatically. “So if you could kindly clear what you need out to the couch…”

“Yes, mother,” he says, voice falsely saccharine. “Will that be all?”

-

Steve doesn’t make any moves too quickly. He knows the risks that come with haste in this slow game of temptation. Though his every cell seems to buzz and scream with blistering desire, he knows he needs to leave behind his writer’s mind and embrace the science that encompasses the home he’s begun to settle into. So he waits, and he watches - like a lion with its prey. He plays with his food ever so subtly - a whisper of a touch along his lower back or a hug that lingers just a moment too long. A hint of his perversion peaks through. There’s just enough to satisfy his ravenous hunger - if only for a moment - but little enough to not reveal his hand.

It’s been two weeks since he’s been staying in the Stark home, and he knows that his patience has limits. He’s spent too many a feverish June evening in his temporary bedroom letting out his frustrations alone on borrowed sheets after the boy sits just a bit too close as they read on the couch. He’s watched through the window too many times with sickeningly possessive eyes as neighborhood girls flirt with his Antonio, and his Antonio flirts back. His mind screams  _ mine, mine, mine _ in bold, bloody print whenever a threat arises. He knows there’s no surprise. His boy is golden, beautiful, delightful, and Steve Rogers is not naive. There will always be people that want what he wants - especially when what he wants is so sweet.

He’s thankful that his breaking point comes at such a convenient time.

Maria and Howard have left for the evening to some high-society event. Howard always was a bit of a blowhard, even in the forties when Steve first met him. They’ve asked Steve to look out for Tony,  _ if it’s not too much trouble. He can get into trouble if he’s left to his own devices.  _ Steve just smiles and tells them that it’s no trouble at all. After all, how can he deny a night alone with his little starling? His soul is lit ablaze every time he looks at him. He is just a mere shadow of that boy from so long ago - a lovely, translucent dragonfly with a broken wing - but Steve’s entire being is sparked with tenderness at the though of him. This, Steve thinks, is what love at first sight must mean.

His jealous frenzy, then, is excusable. After all, the boy is under his care for the time being. That being said, when Steve looks out the window and sees his beautiful dragonfly talking to the neighbor, Obadiah Stane, with that familiar mischievous grin on his pretty lips, he isn’t thinking of excuses. He isn’t thinking of anything at all. He is only graced with one single word in his mind:  _ mine, mine, mine.  _ It plays on a loop as he fails to hold back a tidal wave of violent urges, pushing himself up from his chair by the window to storm down the spiral staircase and out the front door. When he hears the things Stane is saying to his darling treasure, he only becomes even more far gone.

“- Brilliant, Anthony,” he says, and Steve recognizes that tone of desire in his voice. His blood boils, and he barely composes himself as he approaches them.

“Antonio,” he says, voice trembling with poorly concealed rage, “it’s getting dark. Come inside.”

“You’re not the boss of me,” Tony says petulantly, though that lovely, teasing smile grows at the name. That name, much like its bearer, belongs to Steve, and Steve alone.

“Antonio,” he repeats, and a tinge of warning sneaks into his voice. The boy rolls his eyes and follows Steve inside through the door that’s been left open. “You shouldn’t be talking to men like that. Stane has bad intentions. I can tell. I don’t want you to get hurt.”   
  
“Aww, Steven,” Tony says sweetly - teasingly. “I didn’t realize you cared so much.”

“Of course I care. You’re -” He cuts himself off just before he has a chance to really put his foot in his mouth.  _ Mine,  _ is right on the tip of his tongue. He takes in a deep, stabilizing breath. “You’re special, Tony. You can’t trust that people won’t take advantage of you.”   


“And how can I trust  _ you?”  _ His voice is challenging, and he’s standing so close that Steve can feel his hot breath fanning over his own nose. “You’ve only been here for two weeks. I don’t even know you.”

“Trust me, Antonio.” It’s all Steve says, but he says it with a finality that leaves no room for argument. The breath seems to seize in Tony’s chest, but he nods with wide eyes before stepping back and making a beeline for the bathroom. A moment later, the shower is turned on, and Steve fights back a triumphant smile.

-

After that, it builds. Tony sits just a bit too close while they read on the porch swing at dusk. He toys with the funnies page, filling the balmy air with the sound of crinkling paper, while Steve scans the politics section. He drapes his legs over Steve’s lap, and Steve adjusts to let him feel the way it affects him. Maria and Howard sit, oblivious, in their blue Adirondack chairs on the lawn with drinks in their hands. When Steve pushes his hips up the slightest bit, Tony takes his feet away. His dragonfly loves to play games. Always teasing, always giggling, always dancing so freely in the workshop downstairs when he thinks no one is watching. Always tossing the ghost of a wink in the direction of the door when he realizes that Steve is watching.

Tony has been begging to go to the lake for days now. It’s too far for him to walk, and he swears up and down that he’ll die soon if he doesn’t get to swim. Finally, one day after church, Howard and Maria give in. They invite Steve, and he helps them load a picnic in the trunk of the car.

It’s a particularly sweltering day. The sweat beading on Steve’s shoulders dries nearly as soon as it appears, almost sizzling as it evaporates off of his skin, and Tony runs to the car - full of childish glee - in swim trunks and nothing else. His bare feet leave impressions in the damp grass of the freshly-watered jungle of the uncut lawn. His bare chest leaves an impression in the fabric of Steve’s heart, and it struggles to beat properly after that. Tony’s slim, tan torso brings to mind long-buried images of dirty beaches back home, swimming in the Hudson on hot days, riding the Ferris wheel at Coney Island and burning in the beating sun and muggy air. The beautiful vision of his lovely Antonio arrests his breathing momentarily.

Steve sits in the passenger seat beside Howard, and he listens, amused, as Maria spends the whole ride fussing over Tony in the backseat. His dragonfly has that perpetual stain of motor oil on his face, and Steve watches out of his periphery as Maria tries to wipe his nose clean with her thumb. He squirms away and sits, pouting, arms crossed, as far as he can get from his mother. Steve suppresses a fond smile.

“Steve, you’ll love the lake. It’s beautiful,” Maria says, and Steve almost laughs. He has no interest in the  _ lake _ . He has no doubt that it will be just as filthy and disgusting as everything else in Southern California. The only beautiful thing he’s interested in at the lake today is his Antonio, so sweet and soft, smooth like honey.

-

Steve has found a spot in the shade of a blue palo verde tree, and he’s got his book open in his lap, but he’s not really reading it. He’s watching his Antonio, enamored, as he dances gracelessly in the shallows of the blue lake. The water is still throughout the entire lake, disturbed only by the boy’s tactless but enthusiastic activity.

Tony tromps awkwardly ashore, and the round apples of his cheeks are flushed cherry-red from laughter and chilly water. At the sight, Steve can hardly repress the dreadful, perverse thoughts that run rampant in his mind. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, it would take a saint to resist the temptation put forward by those plush pink lips and that gorgeous body. His Antonio is sin personified as he takes a running leap off the dock and emerges with his beautiful face framed by drenched strands of raven hair. He is a miracle - water to wine. Steve could be the best man alive, but after all, he’s only human. There’s only so much he can do.

He spends the rest of that sun-bitten day watching his boy like a lion watches his prey. Calculating, plotting,  _ scheming.  _ The boy will be his.

-

It’s not even a full forty-eight hours after that beautiful Sunday afternoon in July that Howard and Maria announce their plans to send Tony off to camp for the rest of the summer. From there, he will go directly to Cambridge, Massachusetts to waste away the remainder of his adolescence studying engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The knowledge that without Howard’s work on Project Rebirth, Steve wouldn’t have lived long enough to meet his precious Antonio does little to abate violent thoughts of popping his head off with his thumb like he would an ant.

He’s not sure from where the ridiculous idea to send their brilliant son so far from home came. Tony certainly doesn’t  _ need  _ to spend time studying engineering when he’s already far exceeded his father. Steve knows he’s not alone in this, as he can hear Edwin and Ana Jarvis debating with the elder Starks about whether it’s a good idea to send their fifteen-year-old son to college across the country. While they’re being polite about their objections, Steve is so white hot with rage that he has to retreat to his borrowed bedroom and contemplate in solitude his course of action.

You see, men like Steve Rogers are not perverts in the traditional vein. Science and perversion have become one in men who chase after acts of wretched, repulsive relations with any young thing they happen to stumble upon in their feverish journey. These men have a disease, and they’ve found - by logical process - the antidote for their wet-hot longing. Poets rarely have this virus. Rather, what men like Steve have is a devotion. They are perfectly assimilated in their equivocal moral existence into an unequivocal society. They are single-minded - willing to dedicate years of their lives just to have the chance to touch a child as beautiful, as blissfully lovely and soft, as his Antonio.

He is not willing to give up this opportunity. He is not ready to consign the next years of his seemingly endless life to finding another boy so perfect, so radiant, so angelic. How will he save his dragonfly from the will of his parents? Well, loathsome is as loathsome does, and Steve is and always has been a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Just like a wolf, he is hungry for blood, and he will do whatever it takes to protect what belongs to him.

He has the cunning of a man on a crucial mission, though. He cannot act with the haste that his body and soul scream for, so he writes his thoughts in a notebook and waits for the right moment.

-

The morning comes when Tony is due to leave, and Edwin Jarvis has just finished helping him load his things into the trunk of the car. Steve watches woefully through the window as his dragonfly slides into the passenger seat with a sour look on his pretty face. His gangly limbs practically trip over themselves with every movement, and Steve realizes with a churning bitterness just how much he’s going to miss his Antonio.

Just when Maria has opened the driver’s side door to get in and carry Steve’s treasure away from him, the passenger door reopens. Tony comes barrelling out, running like a flash toward the front door. Steve hears his boy’s clumsy footsteps shaking the house as he races up the stairs, and then Tony is stampeding through the door of his bedroom and leaping into Steve’s arms. He wraps his slim legs like a vise around his hips, and the devious smile on his face takes Steve’s breath away. Then he can taste the sweet tang of his Antonio on his lips, and the world slows almost to a halt.

Almost as soon as it comes, it’s gone. Tony has jumped back to the ground, and he’s running off with a delighted giggle. Steve has never felt such loss since the summer of 1933, but he refuses to dwell on it too long. It is only temporary, after all. He lets the ghost of the child’s lips on his own fulfill him for now.

-

It’s been two weeks since Tony left for camp, and Steve is growing more and more restless with every passing day. Still, he waits. If it were truly up to him, he would have Antonio now, but timing is key. It’s just him, really, but he can’t help but feel that the whole Stark household is weighed down by anticipation. Waiting for the other shoe to drop has become quite tedious. Everyone is quieter, and it’s not just the thick jelly of time slowed down by oppressive, torrid heat. It’s the undeniable flavor of suspense, solid, ponderous, a rich red wine on everyone’s tongues. It’s the salty-sweet taste of early August, the cradle of the summer lulling them all into a hundred-year sleep.

The other shoe finally drops Tuesday morning in the second week of August. Steve has just stepped out of the shower, and he walks toward his room with a towel wrapped around his waist. As he gets closer, he can hear the distinct, irritating echo of Maria’s sobs, and the sound is coming from his room.

“Maria, it’s okay.” Howard’s voice is soothing and muffled. Steve can practically imagine his hand rubbing her lower back. There’s an undeniable tinge of anger in his voice, too. Rage, even. “We’ll get that son of a bitch. I promise, honey. You have to calm down.”   
  
Steve turns the corner into the room, and Howard’s eyes narrow on him with laser focus almost immediately. He snatches the notebook out of Maria’s hands and waves it in his face, and Steve tries to keep his face flat when he realizes what it is.

“You fucking pervert,” Howard growls, standing barely a foot away from Steve now. “I welcomed you as a guest into my home, and this is what you do? You fucking…”

Maria grabs his shoulder in almost a calming gesture, but there are tears in her eyes, and she’s looking at Steve like she doesn’t recognize him. He can’t believe he messed up so badly. He can see the key to the drawer on his desk, and he realizes that he left it out. He has nothing to say.

“I can’t believe this, Steve,” she whispers sadly. She tries to stare him down, but her gaze falters, and she runs out of the room and down the stairs. Howard tosses the notebook in Steve’s face and follows after her. Steve stands, frozen, with his eyes staring blankly out the window. He refocuses just in time to see Howard catch up to Maria in the street.

It’s raining, and the driver must not see them. He’s going just a bit too fast, and he takes out Howard and Maria Stark in one fell swoop. Steve remains frozen, but the hint of a smile teases at the corners of his mouth. He didn’t even have to kill them himself.

-

Steve has been patient long enough. He barely stays to burn the notebook and send Edwin and Ana on their way before he’s in a car driving to Twentynine Palms to pick Tony up from camp.

He arrives at the gates of the camp just after three in the afternoon, and a very helpful receptionist calls Tony to the office from his cabin while Steve signs the paperwork to check him out. He feels the breath catch in his throat as his Antonio comes bounding through the double doors of the office. His skin is as golden and glowing as always, if not a bit more sunkissed, and his hair has grown. It falls in a shaggy mess just past his ears now, and he’s beautiful. Steve can hardly find the wherewithal to open his mouth.

Tony comes barrelling at Steve with a smile that’s almost as wide as his entire face. He wraps his slim arms around Steve, and Steve finds himself breathing in that scent he missed so much. The scent that’s so uniquely  _ Tony. _

“Hey, Stevie,” he says, saccharine sweet. “What brings you ‘round here?”

“Antonio,” Steve sighs, and the name tastes so familiar, so lovely on his tongue. Then he remembers why he’s here and puts a false sad facade on. “Your parents were in an accident. They’re in the hospital, and they asked me to come pick you up.”   


Tony’s face falls, and he backs away a step.

“Oh,” he says sadly. “Are they gonna be okay? Are we going to see them?”

“Not tonight, Antonio,” Steve says. “They’ll be alright, but we’re gonna stay clear of the hospital for a while, okay?”

He just nods, and Steve places a reassuring hand on his shoulder to guide him out of the office to his car, parked right out front. Antonio is silent the entire ride to the hotel, but Steve is confident that his melancholy will pass. He will take care of his dragonfly, and the boy will forget all about his parents well before he ever has to reveal the truth.

-

It’s been three days now since he picked up his Antonio from Twentynine Palms, and his patience is wearing thin. His lover is, unfortunately, not an idiot. He certainly didn’t count on Antonio’s stupidity, after all, but he did expect that his boy would embrace the adventure more readily and forget about Howard and Maria altogether. Instead, he’s spent the past days asking about them nonstop.

_ When can I see Mom and Dad? Where are we going? LA is the other way. I wanna go home, Steve. Please, can we go home? _

Steve is longing to get his hands on his little dragonfly once again, but all physical contact has been cut off since the second they started driving East. The golden sunshine of his boy is growing darker, no matter how much bubblegum and soda pop Steve feeds him. The long days and short nights camping on the roadside are beginning to wear on him, as well, so he finally pulls over at a motel just past the Nebraska border as the sun begins to fall.

“So, what brings you two here?” asks the girl at the desk while she enters Steve’s information into the system. She takes his cash and continues typing.

“Oh, just on a quick road trip with my son,” Steve says. Tony shoots him a sharp glare at the lie, but he doesn’t dare say a word.

“Well, you two have a great stay,” she says sweetly, handing Steve a keycard. “You’ll be in room 301.”

“Thank you…” He pauses to read her name tag. “Jenny.”

-

“Why did you lie to the girl at the desk?” Tony asks when they get to their room. Steve shakes the shoes off of his feet and moves to lie on the bed, propped up on his elbows.

“Don’t worry about it, Antonio,” he says, beckoning his boy toward him. “Come here, honey.”

He looks skeptical, but he removes his own shoes and takes a few steps closer to the bed. When his Antonio is close enough, Steve reaches out to grab him by the shoulders and pull him down on top of him. Tony lets out a little squeak of alarm just before Steve seals his lips over his boy’s. He tries to squirm away, but Steve holds tighter.

When he’s done, he holds Tony close as he cries.

“I’m sorry,” he says gently. “I love you, honey. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth about your parents.”

“What about my parents?” Tony looks up from his chest with confused, red-rimmed eyes.

“Antonio, your parents are dead.”

When he says it, Tony’s sobs grow louder, more violent. Steve tries to hold him close, but he worms away and storms angrily to the bathroom, slamming the door shut. Steve sighs, but he puts his clothes back on and walks out the door, making a beeline for the bar.

“Long night?” The man next to Steve at the bar wears a hat pulled down to obscure his face, and he sips slowly on a dry martini.

“Long summer,” Steve sighs.

-

They follow that routine all the way to Pennsylvania. They stay in seedy motels and they make love most nights. Steve feels a rush of affection, warm tenderness, when he kisses his lover, and he wonders how he waited so long for the chance to touch his dragonfly. Sometimes, Antonio reads the funnies while he sits in Steve’s lap, and Steve tries not to take it personally that he seems to be distracting himself on purpose. He usually goes to the bar for a drink afterwards, but it’s not until sometime in the middle of September that he realizes they’re being followed

The man always wears a hat that hides his face, but now he sits as far across the bar as he can manage to avoid being seen. That stature, those mannerisms, though, are oh so familiar. He just can’t put his finger on it.

The next night, after Tony peels himself off of Steve and goes to take a shower, Steve watches the man out of his periphery from his stool at the bar. It’s not until he gets back to the room that he realize that his Antonio is gone.

His search is frenzied, wild. First he checks the lobby, then all the bathrooms - he even checks the bar. Tony is nowhere to be found, and the man at the bar is gone as well.

-

**EPILOGUE**

Tony ran away with Obadiah all those years ago. What was he supposed to do? He’d known the man next door far longer than he knew Steve Rogers, and his only explanation for himself is that he hoped for salvation. He was so exhausted. He was tired of being fucked every night by a man he suddenly resented, and he needed an escape.

Sure, he got one, but Obadiah wanted something from him, too. He wanted all the same things Steve took,  _ and  _ he wanted access to Stark International. When Tony is taken to a cave in Afghanistan and treated to some run-of-the-mill physical torture, it truly feels like a vacation. He returns feeling a control over his own life that he hasn’t felt in twenty-three years.

When he kills Obie, he realizes that he’s finally free, and he doesn’t even know what to do with himself. He suddenly has no one - or, at least, no one who feels real. He no longer has a Steve Rogers or an Obadiah Stane to take the reins - to guide his world. He has Pepper and Rhodey instead, who don’t really know  _ anything  _ about him. Pepper and Rhodey who will never tell him what to do in the way that he misses so dearly.

-

Nick Fury finds Steve in the gym railing on a punching bag late morning one Friday in 2012, and he tells him that the world needs superheroes like it’s never needed them before. Steve doesn’t know what to say, so he just nods and follows. He doesn’t expect, when he climbs aboard a S.H.I.E.L.D. quinjet, to lay eyes upon that beautiful face that he’s been longing to see since 1985.

Deep down, he always knew that his Antonio wouldn’t stay golden forever. After all, teenage boys become adults, and Steve Rogers never really grew into adults after Bucky died. He should have known better, though. He should have known that there was something beyond his dragonfly’s youth that compelled him to fall so madly in love. There were so many times that Antonio said or did something, and it struck him that he didn’t know a thing about his darling’s mind. There was something magical about that, and though he was a mere shadow of that boy from 1933, Steve should have known that he was special. He was someone that Steve could love well past the age of wonder that he dreamed of his whole life. He should have known that he could love his boy until he convulsed miserably with death, and not just death by recklessness, but death by age.

Call his love selfish, sick, detestable, but he’s in awe to look at him twenty-three years past his golden age to find that he still feels nothing but tenderness. Oh, Antonio, he still feels nothing but symphonic, magical, untouchable love at the sight of his dragonfly’s face. He still goes mad with it, still loses his inhibitions at the sound of his ever-raucous voice speaking to Doctor Banner with his back turned. When he finally does turn to face Steve, it’s as though the whole world melts away. Steve reaches his Antonio in only a few long strides. He reaches out his hand, but Tony’s voice stops him, quiet and cracking.

“Don’t touch me,” he says, more a series of stunted breaths than a sentence. “I’ll die if you touch me.”   
  
Doctor Banner looks at Steve, and then at Tony, and then back. It’s clear by his face that he can see some electricity between them and he’s not sure if he’ll shock himself by standing too close. He takes a few steps away so as to give them space, and then his Antonio is crying. They’re silent tears - tears of deeper sorrow than can ever be spoken.

“Oh, my Antonio…” His dragonfly physically recoils at the nickname. “Don’t cry, my love. I’m sorry it’s been so long.”   
  
“No one has called me that in years.” His voice is a violet whiff of the strong voice he projected just minutes ago. “I’m not yours, Steve.”   


“You’ll always be mine. Even before we met, you were mine, and you will be mine well after you’re dead.”  _ After all, life is just one small piece of light between two eternal darknesses.  _ Steve can practically see Tony finish the thought for him. They always shared thoughts before, and he thinks they always will. “Oh, Antonio, why did you leave me to be with Stane? There was no point in being with him.”   
  
“There’s no point in being anywhere,” Tony says brokenly. Hot, opalescent tears - lover’s tears - fall in invisible pools on the floor.

“He hurt you,” Steve says accusingly.

_ “You  _ hurt me, Steve.” His voice is strong now, though it shakes. It’s a ghost of that voice he had as a teenager. All eyes are on them now, watching in that way where the observers don’t want you to know that they’re observing. “Obadiah may have hurt me, but you broke my life. Did you know that I’ve been dead since the day you picked me up from camp? I’ve been dead and alone for twenty-three years because of you. I will  _ never  _ love anyone. I can never feel a connection with anyone again, because you crossed all my wires. I fucking hate you, Steve. Don’t talk to me.”   
  
And though Steve will see him again in the technical meaning of the word “see”, this is the last time he ever truly  _ sees  _ his Antonio. And though he never expected it, it really was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.


End file.
